Alcohol can make a person do some strange things. One of the strangest things it can do is give a person superpowers. That’s the idea in “Buzzkill #1†by Donny Cates and Mark Reznicek and it goes down smooth.
“Ruben†(not his real name, but the only name we are given) is supposedly a superhero who gets his powers by drinking alcohol. The more drinks he has, the more powerful he becomes. Here he goes to an AA meeting- just for fun. He tells the group about how alcohol caused some tragic events in life. In reality these events are supposedly how he got his powers.
That’s the entire comic right there. It’s some drunk who thinks he’s a superhero babbling on about how he’s superior to all the members at the AA meeting. In a strange way, this works. Hell, it’s even genius.
The whole point of the story is that we can’t figure out if “Ruben†is who he says he is. The ambiguity of the whole scenario is what builds up suspense and makes readers want to see what’ll happen next. We don’t see him do anything superhuman: He just says he is and we can’t say no because he is drunk when it happens.
The art goes from competent, to drawn while drunk. There are parts that look like they were drawn with the intent of making the comic look pleasing and there are times where it’s a mess. The pleasing times give the full range of the characters and backgrounds. The messy times just make the characters and backgrounds look like this was a rush job. They look almost as if some one who has a basic idea of what a human looks like and then winged it. It’s hard to look at for a long time.
“Buzzkill #1†has a certain drunken genius that makes the reader want to drink to enjoy it more and get into the comic’s mood. The art, on the other hand, makes the reader drink to forget what he just saw.
Leave a Reply